Archive for March, 2006
Nebraska Results
Posted by: | CommentsGood to be home in warm Tucson! I’ve finished up the trip list from Nebraska, and anyone interested in seeing a copy is welcome to send me a note at birding@birdaz.com.
It would be invidious to pick out a single “highlight” from such a great tour, but here are a few of my favorites from this year’s trip:
Trumpeter Swan
Greater Scaup
Harlequin Duck
Sharp-tailed Grouse
Greater Prairie-Chicken
Whooping Crane
Rough-legged Hawk
Peregrine Falcon
Prairie Falcon
Lesser Yellowlegs
Long-billed Curlew
American Woodcock
Barred Owl
Red-headed Woodpecker
Loggerhead Shrike
Northern Shrike
Black-billed Magpie
Tufted Titmouse
Carolina Wren
Winter Wren
Eastern Bluebird
Louisiana Waterthrush
Red Fox-Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
Lincoln’s Sparrow
Harris’s Sparrow
Cassiar Junco
Rusty Blackbird
Great-tailed Grackle
Well, it was going to be just a few!Â
Great to be home, but I’m already looking forward to next year’s trip: watch www.birdaz.com for the announcement of the dates!
Hail to the Ducks
Posted by: | CommentsA dark, windy, stormy morning in southeast Nebraska. I picked up Carolyn and Ruth early, then swung by to meet Darlene at her hotel for this “clean-up” day after a great tour. Since my plane left in the early afternoon, we decided to concentrate on areas near Omaha.
The south shore of the Platte River, in Cass County, always seems to get migrants earlier than the north bank, so off we set for Louisville. We weren’t able to relocate yesterday’s Rusty Blackbird, but careful scanning of the emberizid flocks revealed a Field Sparrow, cute as cute can be and a good week ahead of schedule; this bird may occasionally winter in southeast Nebraska, but given that I had visited the site a couple of times this past week and not seen the creature, I’m confident that this was a migrant.
Carolyn hadn’t seen Greater White-fronted Goose yet this spring, so we headed for South Bend, where we had good looks at a couple of small flocks in the corn stubble. I was especially pleased this trip to see so many late waterfowl; most years, the 100 or so birds we saw this morning would have been a respectable total for the entire week this late in the month.
The South Bend sewage ponds were less heavily populated than they had been on my earlier visits, with most of the birds now Northern Shovelers. As we admired them (and Wood Ducks, Cackling and Canada Geese, and courting Blue-winged Teal), it suddenly got very dark, very calm, and then it let loose, a burst of rain followed by a steady hail. The nearest birds to us were shovelers, and it was fascinating to watch them pull their heads onto their shoulders, tilt their bills up like so many outsized alcids, and steam to shore, where they hauled out and waited stolidly for the ice to stop falling. Why did they leave the water?
Arrivals and Departures
Posted by: | CommentsThe end of March is at the cusp of arrival and departure for many species on the Great Plains, and it’s hard to schedule a trip to take advantage of both. We arrived back in Omaha late yesterday afternoon, and allowed ourselves the luxury of late rising this morning before heading down to Cass County to check for migrants. It was warmer, thankfully, than it had been the entire trip, and we left snow cover behind us somewhere east of Grand Island; it truly feels like spring tonight, and the birds today certainly suggested that this was, at last, the real thing.
Louisville Lakes were, as usual, covered with birds, but we noted this morning that the American Tree Sparrows were reduced in number, replaced by the first Myrtle Warblers of the spring, a welcome sight after these cold, snowy days (is there anybody brave enough to come on next year’s trip after reading all this, I wonder?). A lone male Rusty Blackbird working the edge of one of the lakes beneath the willows was certainly a sign of things to come, too.
But we hit the jackpot just south of South Bend, at the inscrutably named Platte River Connection Bridge Trailhead parking lot (what’s a “connection bridge”?). A vocal Carolina Wren drew us to Fountain Creek, and on the little island just below the parking area we found first a Swamp Sparrow, then an early Lincoln’s Sparrow, and then, to our great surprise, a record-early Louisiana Waterthrush flew in to chip and bob beneath us. With Tree Swallows overhead and Eastern Phoebes singing everywhere, the season really is here, and it made it hard to take the participants to the airport, knowing that a whole new suite of experiences awaits in the next couple of days.
More Grassland Chickens
Posted by: | CommentsWe’ve crisscrossed the time zones so often in the last 24 hours that I didn’t even know what time it was when I got up; but it doesn’t much matter that early in the morning in any case! Mitch (www.sandhillsmotel.com) loaded us up at 4, Mountain Time, I guess, for the drive north of Mullen to yet another schoolbus in the Sandhills of Nebraska. Fortunately, the wind had died down, but it was still cold and snowy, and we shivered until the birds showed up and made us forget that “unnecessary” layer we’d left in our rooms.
By the time we left, at least 14 male Sharp-tailed Grouse had appeared on the lek, sometimes just a couple of feet from the iced-over windows of the bus, sometimes even beneath the bus, whence their cackles and rattles issued unabated. The dance was considerably more frenzied than that of their cousins yesterday evening: at least 3, perhaps as many as 6, female Sharp-tails visited the lek while we were there, each time causing an unbelievable ruckus as every male danced and cackled on his little territory. I love prairie-chickens, but I have to admit that I enjoy the antics of the Sharp-tails even more, and it’s always a treat to have them so close that you can hear not only the high-pitched buzz of the tail feathers but the thudding of their feet as they whirl and spin. If you’ve never seen these birds, you need to!
Breakfast at Denise’s in Mullen (recommended!), then south through the hills to North Platte. I’d pretty much given up on the bird when a gray form appeared on a telephone wire: Northern Shrike, a splendid, close bird hunting in the grass along the roadside. We’d seen an arriving Loggerhead Shrike a couple of days ago at Wood River, so the comparison was especially gratifying.
The Sandhills
Posted by: | CommentsA lovely drive across the Nebraska Sandhills to Mullen, our admiration of the landscape for the most part uninterrupted by birds. It’s just plain windy out there today! There was a tense moment when a lone Greater Prairie-Chicken blew across the road, giving good views to those of us in the front of the vehicle and no views at all to those in the back. But we made it up–and how.
We arrived in Mullen early afternoon, and Mitch Glidden (www.sandhillsmotel.com) packed us into his Suburban and drove us out south of Seneca through deep snow and inchoate mud. Horned Larks were about the only thing stirring in the wind, until a beautiful Rough-legged Hawk braved the breezes to hover and hunt over the dunes. Now that’s how I remember the Sandhills in winter!
It was a rough 40 minutes to our destination, a decommissioned schoolbus on the edge of an irrigated alfalfa field. Prairie-Chickens flushed at our arrival, but it wasn’t long after we’d disappeared into our big yellow blind that they returned, nearly 80 birds in all, to forage on the windswept crests, and some of them, at last, to boom. I never tire of the lekking grouse, and though the wind made it hard to hear, it was a fascinating couple of hours as the birds danced just a few yards away, pinnae erect to reveal those shocking orange sacs on the neck. It is always an affecting show, the surest way I know to feel the past of the prairies all around you in the present.
